The Empty Shelf Book Reviews

  My Favorite Reads of 2024 Here are my favorite reads from 2024. I read 39 books, a handful of which were re-reads, so I’ll try to pick stuff that I read for the first time. These are in no particular order. Well, they’re in the order that I read them, just not ranked. Magician: Apprentice/Master by Raymond E. Feist (1984) - These are technically the same book. They were written and released in the UK as a single volume called “Magician,” but I guess the deemed US audiences too dumb to read one long book, so they broke it into two volumes. It actually works cause there’s a big time jump about halfway through. It’s the first volume in the Riftwar Saga, which encompasses over 30 books, and also the first in the Riftwar CYCLE, the opening trilogy of the whole damn thing. Whatever format you get it in, this is a great example of classic fantasy. It has a very formal turn of phrase to it - sort of Tolkien-esque - and the world building is excellent. In fact, it takes place on two wor...

       Good Day, good day, and welcome to the Empty Shelf, where we discuss and review Fantasy and Sci-Fi novels and series. My name is Mike and I’ll be your reader and reviewer. As usual, there are some spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution. Today, we’re going to discuss Magician, by Raymond E. Feist. Now, Magician is the first novel in the Riftwar Saga, which is the trilogy that started the Riftwar CYCLE. The Riftwar Cycle encompasses some 30 novels, with a few other novellas and short stories thrown in for good measure. The most recent novel, the one that ended the cycle, is called “Magician’s End” and it was released in 2013. So the whole universe was told over a span of about 30 years. In world, it takes place over about 50 years, across several kingdoms and worlds. It really is quite the epic achievement. The original concept for the world of the Riftwar, called Midkemia, came from Feist’s time in college, where he and his friends were fond of RPGs. Toget...

I've read about half of The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell. If you're unfamiliar, the first book is The Last Kingdom, and it was turned into a very successful tv show on Netflix. I got just a tad burned out on the characters in that series (there are 13 books I think), but I really enjoy Cornwell's style and I love a good King Arthur story, so I set my attention on The Winter King. This is Cornwell's take on the aforementioned King Arthur, except he's not a king. He's a warlord, which is fine. A fresh take can always be nice. Set in the 5th or 6th century, right after the departure of the Romans from Britain, many of the character and place names are very strange. That can be difficult to reconcile from time to time; keeping track of who's who, and where's where. But, again, that's fine because Cornwell includes a glossary at the front of the book that outlines all that stuff. Jumping back and forth is a hassle, but hey...first world problems. I r...

       Good day and welcome to the Empty Shelf, where we discuss and review fantasy and sci-fi novels and series. My name is Mike, and I’ll be your reader and reviewer.  For the past two posts, we’ve been discussing Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series. There have been some good moments, and some really bad ones. Today, we’ll conclude the series with the Chainfire Trilogy. It consists of Chainfire, Phantom, and Confessor. They were originally written as a trilogy, due to the fact that they contain an overarching story. By the time these came out, I had caught up with the series and I had to wait a while in between the three. At the time, the suspense was pretty agonizing. The three books really do read well as a trilogy.  So we begin in Chainfire with Nicci and Cara trying to heal Richard from a grievous wound he sustained off page. Nicci uses subtractive magic to heal him, which sets off some interesting things. When he awakes, he asks for Kahlan, ...